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Wii U Review - Part One: First Impressions

The Wii U has been met with plenty of hype and skepticism. Here are my first impressions of Nintendo‘s brand new console.

I set off on Sunday morning to purchase a brand new Wii U console. My first stop: Walmart.

Upon arrival I was informed that I was too late. Nintendo’s shiny new system had sold out earlier that morning.

Best Buy would open in twenty minutes so I headed across town, where I found myself waiting in line outside in the cold.

Fortunately, I was the fourth person in line. I say fortunately because soon after I arrived several other people showed up. There were some middle-aged folks, some kids, and many people in-between. It was like a miniature Black Friday.

Best Buy sold out of its Wii Us within minutes of opening its doors, but they were at least able to part me from my money.

The first video game console I ever owned was Nintendo’s now-classic NES. I’d been playing games on our old black-and-white Mac for a long time before that, but the Nintendo (nobody, to my knowledge, referred to the system as the NES at the time) had a special magic.

Partly this magic was created by my parents, who told me in no uncertain terms that I would never, ever be allowed to own one. My aunt had brought hers over one day, and I played Super Mario Bros. for the first time and she showed me tricks—like being able to position yourself just right on a particular staircase and smash a Koopa Troopa shell in just the right way to wrack up 99 lives—and I instantly fell in love with the game.

But alas, I lived under the heavy weight of knowing I would never be allowed to own the system for myself….

Until that Christmas, when I opened a rectangular gift and realized, to my shock and disbelief, that it had all been an elaborate con. I quite literally wept with joy at that moment. Never since has any moment with video games evoked such emotion in me. And the games back then were all so wonderful and amazing: Castlevania, Zelda, Metroid, Battletoads…Duck Hunt. What marvelous creations.

The next system I owned was the Super Nintendo, which was equally amazing. Mario Kart, Super Mario World, and a whole host of other games.

But after that, I lost interest in Nintendo systems. As a young adult I did own a Gamecube but I rarely played it, favoring the PS1 and especially the PS2 and the myriad PC games that kept coming out, from DOOM and Quake and other shooters on PC, to Diablo and the many uber-addictive strategy games and then Half-Life 2 and the rise of modern HD PC games, and finally the modern consoles.

So it’s been quite a long time since I’ve really played a Nintendo game. The Wii always struck me as a gimmick, and even though I’m not that concerned with graphics (and believe gameplay is much more critical) the lack of HD graphics in the Wii was still off-putting given the other options. When I finally did consider buying a Wii, news of the Wii U was already floating about and I decided to wait.

One of the great things about the Wii U for someone like me is that I can now play many of the old Wii games on the new system if I choose. So some of the Zelda games I’ve missed, and some of the RPGs that I didn’t get to play, will now be on the table (and if you have recommendations, please shout them out in the comments.)

So get to the point—how is this new Wii U console anyways?

Actually, I like it quite a bit. The graphics on the handful of games I’ve played so far aren’t distinguishable from the graphics you’d find in the Xbox 360 and the PS3, but these are launch titles, and I suspect we’ll see improvements in quality as the console matures, just as we’ve seen in the lifespan of the other two consoles.

Load times feel a bit long, which is a shame, but the user-interface (which differs on the controller and the TV) is intuitive and simple, especially on the gamepad.

You start off right away with several pre-installed video apps like Netflix and Hulu, and they’re all laid out on the gamepad screen in a nice, simple grid. Settings are easy to access and simple to adjust, and the entire set-up process was a breeze. There was a really, excruciatingly long firmware update that I probably should have run over-night, but that’s hardly something to worry about.

What about the controller—is it a gimmick?

I worried the controller would be a gimmick. The Wii motion control system certainly was too gimmicky for me to ever enjoy. But so far at least the new tablet gamepad for the Wii U is pretty great.

Within moments of loading up New Super Mario Bros. U my daughter had emancipated the gamepad from me and was ignoring the TV altogether as she played the game lying on her stomach on the couch, looking only at the gamepad screen.

Later, when my wife tried out the new Mario I was able to flip the input over to the television to check whether The Walking Dead was on while she played without skipping a beat on the gamepad. This is actually an amazing feature for households like mine, making it possible (at least theoretically) for me to play an Xbox game while my wife plays a Nintendo game, or for the family to watch a movie while someone continues playing a game.

The controller is also proving to be useful in games like ZombiUwhere it serves as not just an inventory and map management system, but as a way to place players in even more precarious positions by forcing them to only watch the action peripherally while they search crates or examine their route.

Better still, the controller is not so demanding as the Wii motion system on gamers or developers. A game like ZombiU may depend on its functionality, but many third-party developers could easily create a game that used the gamepad as an optional feature only. I imagine plenty of games for the Wii U will do this, giving players the option to use the regular Wii remotes or the Pro Controller instead of the tablet gamepad.

The controller itself is huge, nearly as wide as the Wii U system (which is, conversely, quite petite.) No matter its size, the gamepad feels quite comfortable to hold. The button placement is pretty good, though at times the right thumbstick feels a bit too far above the buttons. The left and right triggers are positioned an inch or so beneath the top of the gamepad, which makes them really easy to access and use.

The gamepad also utilizes sound in interesting ways.

For a game like Mario basically the same sound comes out of the controller as your TV, which gives the game a surround-sound effect even if you don’t have surround sound. In ZombiU certain sounds come out of the controller, like the mysterious guy on the radio, while music and other sound effects play on the television.

Overall, playing with the controller takes a little getting used to but feels really good. I find it a more intuitive layout than a system like the PS Vita, though this is also partly due to its larger size, larger thumbsticks, and so forth. Some may not like it at all, but so far everyone in my family, with all their various-sized hands, has enjoyed it immensely.

Content is King

When I spoke with Scott Moffitt, EVP of Sales & Marketing for Nintendo of America, I asked him if Nintendo was more aggressively pursuing third party games or if they’d shifted their strategy toward more of a reliance on third party titles.

He told me that he believed the lack of third party development for the Wii basically boiled down to the barriers created by the unique control system on the Wii. Developing cross-platform titles was a challenge and the barrier to entry often proved too high. The Wii U, on the other hand, presents no similar stumbling block.

In other words, the Wii U touch controller may not be for everyone, but it’s not so integral to the Wii U experience either, and a wide array of games that utilize that controller in many different ways (including making very little use of it) will be possible.

When I asked about both the hypothetical competition from other next-gen consoles and the rise of mobile gaming, Moffitt told me that in his opinion it’s not all about graphics and it’s not all about the Next Big Thing (such as the aforementioned mobile gaming.)

Content is king, and Nintendo is focusing on bringing as much good content to the Wii U as possible and taking advantage of the popularity of the Nintendo DS and 3DS and the two-screen innovations those handheld systems have utilized already.

Nintendo sees themselves being in the hardware business for a long time to come, and staying in a competitive position through the release of lots of quality content that you won’t find anywhere else. Certainly that strategy has worked for Nintendo in the past, and with a full-HD system I don’t see it failing now.

Of course, I can’t predict the future or what sort of power and innovation Sony and Microsoft will bring to the table, but I tend to agree that content is king. So far, Nintendo hasn’t disappointed with its new system.

For my part, the combination of released and upcoming Wii U titles, combined with all the Wii titles I missed, has me pretty pumped about this system.

So will this be a worthy next-gen system? Should I buy it?

Hard to say.

If you’re upgrading from a Wii, it’s certainly going to be a nice big step. The HD graphics look great, even if they’re not on par with PC and won’t be as high-fidelity as the next-gen competition (though this remains speculation.)

Being able to achieve 1080P at 60 frames-per-second is the holy grail of console gaming right now and the Wii U will run Unreal Engine 4, Unity, and other modern engines, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 runs at 60 frames-per-second already.

If you’ve been wanting to get back into Nintendo, like me, but were turned off by motion controls and standard-definition graphics, the Wii U solves those problems nicely, and launches with some good games already out and more on the way, including exclusives like Monster Hunterand Bayonetta 2.

Certainly the people in line at Best Buy and the early risers who cut me to the quick at Walmart were happy to get their new systems, and Nintendo hasn’t had any problem pushing these things off the shelves.

I haven’t played around with the new Miiverse social network stuff, so I’ll report back on that later, but the fact that Nintendo’s network is free (as opposed to Xbox Live) makes it a nice home entertainment system as well. And I’ve only played a handful of games so far, and have at least another handful I’m eager to try out.

More on the Wii U and its line-up of games to follow in the coming days (and after the holiday.) If you own a Wii U, what do you think of it so far? Is it worth the upgrade?

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I’d say the must play wii games are Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. I can’t think of any other title that really grabbed me like those did. I actually sold back my copy of Smash Bros and both Zelda’s I felt were more of the same, with Wind Waker easily beating them in the fun department. Other M was a disappointment after Prime.

Paper mario and wario ware was fun. Kirby’s Epic Yarn was a lot of fun to play with my wife.

One game I wanted to play but never got to it was donkey kong country returns, I heard such good things about it.

I just picked it up from a local Target on my lunch break (I was tracking their inventory online and noticed they just received a shipment). I’m excited to take it home and try it out. My only real concern is that I will be able to transfer my saved games from my existing Wii via an SD card.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade is a game similar to Odin Sphere(PS2 RPG) for the Wii. Both games have awe inspiring artwork and some of the best voice acting a video game can offer. They feel like works of art over games to me at times. Odin Sphere is the better game, but Muramasa is cheap enough at this point to be worth it.

I have resisted buying the Wii U right away. I am going to wait it out and see the reaction. I have heard that the OS is sluggish and the battery on the tablet controller is short.

The battery life is short from what I’ve read, but it has a really convenient charging cradle and so far I haven’t run into any problems. The OS is sluggish for sure (I believe I mentioned the load times somewhere) and I hope at least some of that is hammered out in an update.

Nice to Read, I am kind of Happy that the WiiU isn’t out yet in Europe so I can get a lot of Information from a lot of Sources befor the Console comes to Store.

And yes, Donkey Kong Country Returns Rules. Easy the best 2D Jump n Run of this Generation. But yeah, some Motion Controls were a bad Idea…

One Game I really liked on the Wii was “Fragil Dreams”. Can’t really say if you would like it, its a special Game. Just look at Metacrtic, it gets very diffrent Ratings, from good to bad. But it is a hidden Gem for me.

And of course, Fire Emblem. Great Round Based Strategy, I love the Fire Emblem Series and the one for the WiiU is a great Game. Not my Favorite of the Series, but its still Great.